Sir John Franklin’s NW Passage expedition (1845) was surely one of the most pathetic tragedies in history. The trip was planned carefully, but the expedition itself was doomed from the star-too many me, badly canned food, ships with too great a draft.
The thing that puzzles me-years before, Franklin had led an overland expeition from Great Slave Lake, to the shores of the Arctic Ocean. He noted the thick sea ice, and the barreness of the lands around the sea. So why did they attempt this trip by sea?
Nobody actually sailed through the NW passage until 1909 (Amundsen)-most of the time, the route is totally blocked by ice.
What posessed Franklin to plan this disaster?
Dreams of wealth and glory?
There were two main goals of Franklin’s expedition. The first was just to fill in a lot of the gaps in current maps at the time. There was a big push during this era to completely explore the world and fill in all of these gaps, and I think Franklin got caught up in that ideal a bit (just my opinion). He wanted to be one of the folks that filled in the remaining gaps.
His second goal wasn’t just to get from point A to point B to prove it was possible. He was looking for a trade route that ships could use to get from Europe to Asia. Finding one would have been a REALLY BIG THING and would have made him a worldwide hero. They had already proven that such a trade route was not physically possible at lower latitudes, so Franklin was already more than aware that this was going to be a miserable trip through the northern ice no matter what. This was their last hope for a quickie Europe to Asia trade route, so a lot of folks had high hopes for this expedition. I personally believe that Franklin was certain that while his expedition would be difficult, he was certain he would find a way through the ice and misery.
Thanks to global warning, there now IS a viable NW passage most years.
But the world has developed other sea routes (like a Panama Canal), and things like cargo airplanes, so there doesn’t seem to be much use for a NW Passage right now.
Franklin didn’t really want to go, he’d done enough exploring, but, like other leaders of Great British Disasters who knew they weren’t up to the job, conceived that it was his duty to do what others asked or ordered him to do.
So, it was your fault! I might have guessed! :mad::mad:
Nobody knew exactly what there was that far north and, iirc, the theory that there was an open polar sea around the pole hadn’t been entirely discredited at that time. Some expeditions thought they could break through the ice and reach clear water.